I am considering whether people think I should blow the whistle on something that happened in a government office a few years back.
I have since moved, but when I worked for a Federal agency in 2004, a not-for-profit decided to pursue a project in the town in which my direct supervisor lived. At the preconstruction meeting, this supervisor revealed that he had gone to the NFP agency and suggested they look in his town for a spot in which to build this project, and submit it under a competitive grant program, which they won (but the number of applicants was the same as the number of grants available, so they did not take a spot away from another competitor). He also said he had attended town meetings, as a private citizen, to support the building of the project. Further, he never recused himself from any involvement in the process as a Federal supervisor, which he definitely should have done even though he was not on the panel that ultimately decided the winning applicants. He told us he did all this because he though it would be nice if his town had one of these projects! :eek:
I have not reported him in the past because I was not inclined to do so while I worked under him and could possibly suffer reprisals if he found out who reported him (still possible, I guess; but not likely). If I do report him it will be out of a sense of duty, but I don’t actively dislike the guy - although I do consider him moraly shaky based on other things he does (e.g. he ran a local toll for months because he was mad about having gotten a ticket once for making a U-turn on the interstate).
What do you all think? I can give a little more information if needed, but as you can see I’m trying to be vague about the details.
Could you clarify what “ran a local toll for months” means? And I guess I’m not clear what he did wrong, since he wasn’t on the panel that decided the winner. So all he did was suggest a location for a project, and the people in charge agreed with him, looked into it and decided it was a good spot. Then he went to a couple town meetings and said he thought the project was a good idea, without telling the town he had suggested to the Not For Profit to base their project there. Now was the grant coming from the Agency he worked for? But he had nothing to do with awarding the grant…he just suggested they apply?So how is any of this wrong…or wrong enough to ruin a career over? I’m not understanding what laws were broken.
Ethically, the guy should have removed himself from all discussions and decisions regarding the NFP agency and their proposal. But – did he benefit personally from this? Was any money or other payment involved that went directly to him? Was anyone disadvantaged because of his actions?
If not, then I’m not sure why you’d consider whistleblowing “a few years” after it all took place.
He supervises the people from the agency that do the site visits and award the rating points that determine who gets the grants, plus he supervises most of the people on the deciding panel. He has a LOT to do with deciding who gets the grant. I will try and find the chapter and verse that expressly says what he did wrong but yes, what he did violated some of the ethics in the agency.
Is it enough to endanger his career? I don’t know, and that’s a big part of the reason I haven’t acted, and why I wanted other opinions.
i’m not sure that anything unethical actually occurred. IF there had been more applications than funds, then there would have been a point when he should have excused himself from the decision-making process. Since there were sufficient funds, couldn’t he just say he intended to recuse himself but it became a moot point?
I’ll add that I’m ‘standing next to’ a couple of projects that disgust me from a taxpayer’s standpoint. I’ve spent a long time reviewing my feelings and had been in a position to call attention to the waste…then took a closer look at the situation, vis a vis whistleblowing.
Around these parts, the media is a very specific cant. If I came forward as a state employee, the result would be: ‘Look at all the government waste! Ooh! Look! Something else to divert our attention.’
The week after that, I’ve got a black eye, 12 more years in this career, and the media (and by extension the public) will have gone elsewhere. There is no smoking gun, the people involved are smart enough to keep that from happening.
The people causing the problems are adept as displacing blame, they wouldn’t have risen has high up in the system as they have if they weren’t. There’s been SEVERAL times where they were under the thumb and somehow skirted free. They appear to be politically untouchable, and so I’ve kinda filed it under
How, exactly? It’s Not Rocket Surgery! doesn’t work for the federal government anymore, and I seriously doubt that the fact that his/her former boss works for the government means he has a direct line to the person who orders IRS tax audits, for example.
I doubt that blowing the whistle at this late date will accomplish anything, but I don’t see where big reprisals are a major concern.
Sure. One day he got on the interstate going the opposite way he had intended to go. He reached the toll (which was only 50 cents at the time) and, instead of exiting and getting on the highway going the opposite way, did a U-turn right before the tolls, despite several signs that say it’s a no-no. He got a $75 ticket and apparently vowed to get the $75 back at the tolls, since he uses them every day to commute, and up until 2006, the automated tolls had no gates so if you didn’t pay, all that would happen is that the tolls would buzz (which happened a LOT, as the tolls were pretty slow to register coin drops). So he would regularly “run” the tolls, attempting to get back “his” $75 back. He didn’t think he should have gotten the ticket, as he was trying to get somewhere the opposite direction and thinks he shouldn’t have had to pay the toll to do so.
It is easy for a former boss to screw over any future employment, he just makes “off the record” warnings about some huge performance issue, or even sez “Off the record, we found kiddy porn on his computer, but our boys accidentaly erased the file so we just forced him to resign”. The OP will have a very hard time ever getting another job.
The fact that there were not any other bidders is another reason for me to not have reported him so far. But he needed to recuse himself the second their application was received because he is completely involved in the funding process. He reviewed the site visit, and I know he worked harder than usual to resolve problems that arose during the site selection. He really pushed the job through; even though he was not a part of the actual selection panel, he made the building of the project easier than it would have been had he been neutral about the project as his job requires.
I should add that the agency’s Office of Inspector General has a process set up to review cases such as this. From the website:
ABUSE - (name of agency) officials or (agency)-funded local officials whose actions exceed the authority granted to them by (agency) policies and regulations.
Also:
WHY REPORT? All federal employees are required to report violations of law and Standards of Conduct and danger to public health and safety. All citizens should feel a moral responsibility to report violations to assure that taxpayers’ monies are well spent.
WILL YOU PROTECT MY IDENTITY? Yes, if you are a federal employee complainant. On request and at OIG’s discretion, this protection can be extended to non-federal complainants. The identities of confidential complainants are protected because only OIG personnel know them. However, the Inspector General Act of 1978 gives us authority to disclose a confidential complainant’s identity in limited situations, such as where the disclosure of a complainant’s identity is unavoidable in pursuit of an audit or an investigation. This kind of disclosure is necessary only on an extremely infrequent basis. Of course, an anonymous complainant is always protected because we do not know that person’s identity. From an OIG point of view, it is more advantageous for us to know the identity of the complainant in case it is necessary to interview the complainant or ask follow-up questions.
One other thing I should add: I still work for this agency, but for a different office and a different section.
However, in many whistleblower cases, the dude being accused gets to know the fact of what the accusation is, and that- in many cases- limits the possible whistleblowers to only a couple.
In my whistleblower case, the accused knew exactly who ratted him out and the “investigator” wasn’t smart enough to try to conceal anything or give misdirection.
So, this is nice verbage, but in the grim reality of life, you get nothing, the accused often gets away scot free and there’s plenty of retaliation after wards.
The level of corruption and purported malfeasance you’re seeking to redress by telling on him is so relatively petty, and is now four years past I’ve got to think you’ve either got it in for this guy, despite your statements to the contrary, or you are some obsessive type who wants to big deal it with this info.
If he was jamming the system for personal gain or screwing other communities that would be one thing, but green-lighting a desired public works project for his town because he had the savvy and inside pull to do so is not in the catalog of major sins in my opinion.
Well, I already said I don’t LIKE the guy, due to his moral issues (including hypocrisy; he’s a holy roller but is also a bully), but he’s also a good father. Just because I’m now bringing this up here now doesn’t mean I haven’t wrestled with this issue since Day One.
The only reason he didn’t screw other communities is because of lack of applicants, but he could not have known that when he decided to steer the project towards his town. Most years, the number of applicants exceed the available projects. Plus I took that into account. Had there been other competition, I would almost certainly have reported it.